Three-dimensional space is a geometric three-parameter model of the physical universe (without considering time) in which all known matter exists. These three dimensions can be labeled by a combination of three chosen from the terms length, width, height, depth, and breadth. Any three directions can be chosen, provided that they do not all lie in the same plane.

In physics and mathematics, a sequence of nnumbers can be understood as a location in n-dimensional space. When n = 3, the set of all such locations is called three-dimensional Euclidean space. It is commonly represented by the symbol . This space is only one example of a great variety of spaces in three dimensions called 3-manifolds.

In mathematics, analytic geometry (also called Cartesian geometry) describes every point in three-dimensional space by means of three coordinates. Three coordinate axes are given, each perpendicular to the other two at the origin, the point at which they cross. They are usually labeled x, y, and z. Relative to these axes, the position of any point in three-dimensional space is given by an ordered triple of real numbers, each number giving the distance of that point from the origin measured along the given axis, which is equal to the distance of that point from the plane determined by the other two 2 axes.

A sphere in 3-space (also called a 2-sphere because its surface is 2-dimensional) consists of the set of all points in 3-space at a fixed distance r from a central point P. The volume enclosed by this surface is:

Another type of sphere, but having a three-dimensional surface is the 3-sphere: points equidistant to the origin of the euclidean space at distance one. If any position is , then characterize a point in the 3-sphere.

In the familiar 3-dimensional space that we live in, there are three pairs of cardinal directions: north/south (latitude), east/west (longitude) and up/down (altitude). These pairs of directions are mutually orthogonal: They are at right angles to each other. Movement along one axis does not change the coordinate value of the other two axes. In mathematical terms, they lie on three coordinate axes, usually labelled x, y, and z. The z-buffer in computer graphics refers to this z-axis, representing depth in the 2-dimensional imagery displayed on the computer screen.

Another mathematical way of viewing three-dimensional space is found in linear algebra, where the idea of independence is crucial. Space has three dimensions because the length of a box is independent of its width or breadth. In the technical language of linear algebra, space is three-dimensional because every point in space can be described by a linear combination of three independent vectors.

The dot product of two vectors A = [A1, A2,A3] and B = [B1, B2,B3] is defined as:[1]

A vector can be pictured as an arrow. Its magnitude is its length, and its direction is the direction the arrow points. The magnitude of a vector A is denoted by . In this viewpoint, the dot product of two Euclidean vectors A and B is defined by[2]

One can in n dimensions take the product of n − 1 vectors to produce a vector perpendicular to all of them. But if the product is limited to non-trivial binary products with vector results, it exists only in three and seven dimensions.[3]

where the expression between bars on the right-hand side is the magnitude of the cross product of the partial derivatives of x(s, t), and is known as the surface element. Given a vector field v on S, that is a function that assigns to each x in S a vector v(x), the surface integral can be defined component-wise according to the definition of the surface integral of a scalar field; the result is a vector.

Suppose V is a subset of (in the case of n = 3, V represents a volume in 3D space) which is compact and has a piecewisesmooth boundaryS (also indicated with ∂V = S). If F is a continuously differentiable vector field defined on a neighborhood of V, then the divergence theorem says:[5]

The left side is a volume integral over the volume V, the right side is the surface integral over the boundary of the volume V. The closed manifold ∂V is quite generally the boundary of V oriented by outward-pointing normals, and n is the outward pointing unit normal field of the boundary ∂V. (dS may be used as a shorthand for ndS.)

Three-dimensional space has a number of topological properties that distinguish it from spaces of other dimension numbers. For example, at least three dimensions are required to tie a knot in a piece of string.[6]

^WS Massey (1983). "Cross products of vectors in higher dimensional Euclidean spaces". The American Mathematical Monthly90 (10): 697–701. doi:10.2307/2323537. JSTOR2323537. If one requires only three basic properties of the cross product ... it turns out that a cross product of vectors exists only in 3-dimensional and 7-dimensional Euclidean space.